Watching
I.
In the soft, velvet humidity of a late spring night , I watch her sleep. With the last light of the moon slipping into the window, I can just see the slight smile she wears in her slumber.
No nightmares tonight. At least, not yet.
I trace a finger down her arm, which she has flung out from the blankets. She doesn't stir. There was a time, after I came back, when we were both still haunted, broken shells, that any movement at night would have her awaken; tense and ready for an attack, as if cornered. As if still in the games, still hunted, still exploited for other people's causes. We were barely more than children and they did this, to us.
The wind shifts and a breeze rushes in through the open window. There is no more ash in the air; the months of clean up, of burials, of stumbling over the bones of those you knew and loved are over. We just stumble over their memories now.
A year ago, a lifetime ago, I never expected this. To be here, like this, with her. I thought, so many times, I'd buy her life with mine...in the arena, in the capital, in the war. And then I thought she'd choose him, but the bombs, and a dead sister, happened.
She tells me this would have happened anyway, on those days when I'm still shaking from visions and waking terrors. When, as I come down and the shuddering starts, I ask her why...why me? She tells me it was always me, she just didn't know it at first. That "the boy with the bread" became the ally in the cave, and in the second arena, with its force-field and beaches, I became the one she couldn't be without. She tells me of going nearly mad when I was taken from her by the capital, and of how I gave her purpose. She tells me of sitting in a chair for months, waiting but not knowing for what, or whom...slowly fading until she heard me planting bushes.
She says I saved her.
She says, often, that she needs me. She shows daily, in a thousand little things, that she is here for me, for us.
A week ago, after need and passion mounted inside both of us, with hands and lips still exploring, with hearts starting to quiet after pounding, I asked her a question, hoping, wanting, needing to hear the answer.
And she said, "Real."
I run my hand along her arm, from shoulder down to elbow. Smooth skin with scars interlacing. She shifts ever so gently in her sleep, towards me, with a murmur escaping from her dream.
"oh, my girl," I think, heart full. Mine. With a tender, yet fierce love, I softly kiss her forehead. Mine, to love, to protect, to shelter, to adore. How long have we been the harbor for each other, in all of life's storms?
"Peeta?" a sleepy inquiry, a smile laced with concern, "are you alright? Dreams?"
"No love, shhh, no dreams. Go back to sleep." My free hand strokes her hair back from her face. I kiss her forehead again, then a whisper of a kiss on her lips.
Her eyes are heavy and drooping, as she kisses me back. She turns to fit closer against me, her head nestling into my shoulder. She nuzzles and murmurs something unintelligible as sleep reclaims her.
Some nights almost no sleep comes. Not from the nightmares and terrors, but because I need to drink in the peace of holding her. To know no enemy is coming, that no cannon will boom. That tomorrow there is baking to do as she hunts in the morning, that over lunch we'll discuss the book and spend a quiet afternoon working on it. To know that I can look across the table at her, her brow furrowed in concentration, and know that she is mine. That come after the evening meal, I'll hold her by the fireside, maybe in silence, maybe in conversation, until the hour grows late and I lead her off to bed. To love and commune, in passion and joy.
And through it all, to know we are safe.